Addressing Attribution through Contribution Analysis: Using Performance Measures Sensibly

By J. Mayne. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2001

367 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract: The changing culture of public administration involves accountability for results and outcomes. This article suggests that performance measurement can address such attribution questions. Contribution analysis has a major role to play in helping managers, researchers, and policymakers to arrive at conclusions about the contribution their program has made to particular outcomes. The article describes the steps necessary to produce a credible contribution story.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Management Science and Operations Research, Public Administration

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0a8ef4389853342e52adebf20518cd3da1d24f74

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

1. B. Befani
2. A. Crane
3. Stephen Brammer
4. M. Seitanidi
5. J. Mayne

In Management Science and Operations Research

1. B. Befani
2. A. Crane
3. Stephen Brammer
4. M. Seitanidi
5. J. Mayne

In Public Administration

1. B. Befani
2. A. Crane
3. Stephen Brammer
4. M. Seitanidi
5. R. van Tulder
6. J. Mayne

Citations in the corpus

• Challenges and Lessons in Implementing Results-Based Management (2007, background): “Mayne (2001) discusses contribution analysis as a way of addressing this issue, short of doing an evaluation, through the careful consideration of the theory behind the programme.”
• Enhancing the Impact of Cross-Sector Partnerships (2015, background): “The first perspective of evaluators measuring impact takes the partnership as of point of departure and defines impacts as the effects at the final level of a causal chain.”
• Enhancing the Impact of Cross-Sector Partnerships (2016, background): “4 In so-called theory-based evaluation literature, the search for a particular type of ‘logic’ is known by interchangeable concepts as ‘logic models’ (Mayne 2001), ‘result chains’ (DCED/OECD 2010), Footnote 4 continued ‘programme theories’ (Rogers 2009) or ‘Theories of Change’ (Weiss 1997; Vogel 201”
• Process Tracing and Contribution Analysis: A Combined Approach to Generative Causal Inference for Impact Evaluation (2014, positive): “Contribution analysis (Mayne 2012b, 2008, 2001) and process tracing (Beach and Pedersen 2011; Collier 2011; Bennett 2010, 2008) both seek to make causal inferences about cause and effect using non-counterfactual approaches based on similar analysis tools: causal mechanisms and theories of change.”